Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/226

 My gossip in the mean time is also laboring for the world. His study is a sort of sacristy, and his printing-press a pulpit, wherefrom he preaches to all men; for an Author is the Town-chaplain of the Universe. A man who is making a book will scarcely hang himself; all rich lords'-sons, therefore, should labor for the press; for, in that case, when you awake too early in bed, you have always a plan, an aim, and therefore a cause before you why you should get out of it. Better off, too, is the author who collects rather than invents,—for the latter with its eating fire calcines the heart; I praise the Antiquary, the Heraldist, Note-maker, Compiler; I esteem the Title-perch (a fish called Perca-Diagramma, because of the letters on its scales), and the Printer (a chafer, called Scarabæus Typographus, which eats letters in the bark of fir),—neither of them needs any greater or fairer arena in the world than a piece of rag-paper, or any other laying apparatus than a pointed pencil, wherewith to lay his four-and-twenty letter-eggs.—In regard to the catalogue raisonné, which my gossip is now drawing up of German Errata, I have several times suggested to him, "that it were good if he extended his researches in one respect, and revised the rule by which it has been computed, that, e. g. for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter, four hundred and fifty semicolons, three hundred periods, &c., are required; and to recount, and see whether, in Political writings and Dedications, the fifty notes of admiration for a hundred-weight of pica black-letter were not far too small an allowance, and if so, what the real quantity was."

Several days he wrote nothing; but wrapped himself in the slough of his parson's-cloak; and so in his canonicals, beside the Schoolmaster, put the few A-b-c shooters